Sony to quintuple sales of the Walkman, add WMA support
comment: 0 | Thursday, September 15 (2005) 07:09AM | Posted by
Austin VaughanAccording to an article at NYtimes.com, Sony has big plans for thier new line of audio players, including the NW-A1000 (6gb) and NW-A3000 (20gb, pictured).
"Sony has set an ambitious goal of selling 4.5 million of the new Walkmans worldwide in the fiscal year ending next March. That is more than five times the number of older versions of the Walkman it sold last fiscal year, but still a far cry from the 6.2 million iPods that Apple sold in the three months through June."
We've heard the same kind of lofty goals from the likes of Creative and Samsung, but Sony may have the muscle to pull it off. This should help as well:
"The new line of Walkmans will work smoothly with MP3 and Atrac, Sony says, and a software upgrade scheduled to be available in December will allow the machines to support Windows Media."
It's not clear yet if this includes any kind of WMA DRM support, or WMA10 DRM (Janus) which would make them compatible with music download services like Napster and Yahoo Music.
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Comments: 287
i'll tell you how Sony can get that goal... (1) get rid of Sonic Stage.. or upgrade it... (2) play movies or at least pics, (3) OGG and FLAC, (4) CHeaper Price.. it's even more expensive than IPods!!